Hi folks. I'm a newbie (newbee?) To the buzz biz but have had horses for a few years. In reference to the suggestions to using bailing twine (from hay); please bear in mind that most bailing twine, even the jute or hemp, may be impregnated with a rodenticide (to discourage mice from opening your freshly bailed hay)So ask questions before using it.

I have used pine shavings, cotton rags, dadant smoker fuel, hardwood leaves, combinations of all of the above and by far my favorite is pine straw. I bought two bales of pine straw at home depot, placed them in an old garbage can next to my beehives so i always have a readily available source of very dry smoker fuel. For me it works great. The trick is to get a good source of real hot pine straw coals so to speak, then pack it with dry straw, puff it till hot again and it will produce smoke for hours.

Lately I've been getting a raging inferno going with birch bark and pine cones, then I pack in some dried horse poop and/or sumac seed heads, and top it off with a wad of green grass to cool the smoke off. Works great, lasts a long time.

When I'm going to work a few hives I use wood shavings from my wood plane.But when I'm going to work a lot of hives I use wood pellets for they will keep a smoke going for 4 hours or so.The only draw back of wood pellets is it takes longer to get them smouldering.